Welcome to Sunday, November 3. 2024, and National Sandwich. Do you think that’s a sandwich? Now THIS is a sandwich (from Harold’s New York Deli in Edison, New Jersey):
A video: “This is a large sandwich”. I love the Pickle Bar. Be sure to watch the whole video. The latkes are as big as tires!
And Google tells us to vote. I voted by mail a long time ago, but I expect that all American readers here will either have voted already or will do so on Tuesday. Click to see where the Doodle leads (it tells me how to vote in Illinois, so perhaps you’d better click on your local Doodle).
It’s also, importantly, the end of Daylight Savings Time, which changed at 2:00 a.m., so if you missed that, set your clocks back an hour NOW. And it’s Cliché Day (when there are boots on the ground and people are taking deep dives into topics), World Jellyfish Day, and Zero-Tasking Day, a day in which you do bupkes.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*From the NYT we have an article called “In shift from 2020, identity politics loses its grip on the country” (archived here). The evidence:
If some Americans thought the left’s code of conduct went too far, most were not willing to say so. Polls taken in 2020 showed that large majorities of people — including self-described Democrats and liberals — said that they did not always speak freely about their beliefs for fear of retaliation.
Today, in this presidential election between Vice President Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, politics still burns hot, and voters are just as deeply divided.
But the country is also in a starkly different place from four years ago. Case in point: Ms. Harris is boasting about protecting her home with a Glock, proclaiming her patriotism and campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney.
. . . Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of “The Identity Trap,” which traced how academic theories about the shared injustices of certain identity groups spread to mainstream organizations.
Today, he said of progressives, “The brief era of their unquestioned dominance is now coming to an end.”
It’s not that Americans have become more accepting of or inured to discrimination. Polling has consistently found that a majority of the country believes racism remains a problem. Black, Latino and Asian people say it is a bigger concern than white people do. And the country is still fighting over how to address discrimination based on gender, race and education.
What seems to have shifted, according to scholars and political strategists who have closely watched how public views have evolved, is that people are now acknowledging that certain identity-focused progressive solutions to injustice were never broadly popular.
. . . Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Democratic Party as captive to radicals and activists are not likely to mean much to many liberals. But some of the most effective pushback to the hard left has, in fact, come from within institutions sympathetic to progressive impulses.
In academia, many top universities no longer mandate diversity statements for job applicants. Some schools have rebuked student activists for heckling visiting speakers and suspended them for disrupting events. And to the consternation of free-speech supporters, they have cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists who have pitched tents in campus quads and taken over academic buildings.
I am a free-speech supporter, and free speech is NOT inconsistent with cracking down on violations of campus “time, place, and manner” regulations put in place to ensure free access to education and discussion. The last sentence above is misleading. But there are signs that identity politics, an important part of wokeness, are abating a bit:
Attempts to integrate academic terminology into the vernacular have also not caught on. For instance, when the Pew Research Center asked Latinos in 2020 if they used the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” 3 percent said yes. When Pew asked the same question this year, it was 4 percent.
The article continues with some caveats: for example, DEI initiatives are firmly integrated into many areas of American society. But we’re back in the “Is wokeness on the wane?” debate, and while my confirmation bias wants me to say “yes”, I’m not so sure. I think Kamala Harris, for example, has largely abjured identity politics because she knows that it turns off both the center Left and center Right, and I’m betting that if she’s elected, the issues will come roaring back, as progressives will feel vindicated. I hope I’m wrong, as I was wrong before when I though that Biden’s election signaled the end of wokeness.
*The Gatestone Institute discusses the ways that the Biden/Harris administration, despite promising to keep the bomb out of Iran’s hands, has actually facilitated it. I’ve been banging on about this for a while, and although I Gatestone is a conservative think tank, I do agree with their view that the U.S. doesn’t much are about whether Iran gets nukes:
One of the most alarming features of the Biden-Harris administration is its permissive stance towards Iran’s nuclear program. When this administration came into power, they promised that they would effectively address and curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yet, nearly four years into Biden’s term, US Secretary of Stare Antony Blinken announced that Iran is “probably 1-2 weeks” away from having nuclear weapons — and that was in July.
Iran is now just a technical step away from acquiring a nuclear bomb, and these advances have been taking place while the Biden-Harris administration has done not a single thing to stop or even slow them.
According to the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Iran has significantly enlarged its stockpile of enriched uranium, and brought it to enrichment levels dangerously close to weapons-grade. Tehran has also ramped up the number of operational centrifuges and invested heavily in the research and development of advanced centrifuge technologies. Iran is evidently on a fast track toward achieving full nuclear weapons capability. Earlier findings paint an even more troubling picture: Iran’s uranium enrichment levels reportedly reached 84%, just shy of the 90% level required for creating nuclear weapons.
Why are the US and its allies not alarmed?
Not only has the Biden-Harris administration failed to take any action to thwart the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions, it has actually facilitated Iran’s progress. Through its policies, the Biden-Harris administration has provided Iran with “closer to $60 billion,” funds that are almost certainly being used to bolster the regime’s military and nuclear programs.
The Biden-Harris administration has not only also failed to enforce sanctions on Iran, they have given it massive financial resources and political cover, allowing it to develop its nuclear program to the point of near-completion.
The Biden-Harris administration has, in fact, protected Iran’s progress. After Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, the Biden-Harris administration immediately urged Israel not to target Iran’s nuclear facilities in retaliation. Israel has a clear opportunity to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program and potentially it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The U.S. administration, however, has been trying to shield Iran from such consequences, allowing its nuclear infrastructure to remain intact and continue advancing.
By pressuring Israel to refrain from defending itself, the Biden-Harris administration seems to be protecting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, raising serious questions about U.S. priorities in the Middle East. At least one Iranian-American, Ariane Tabatabai, for instance, who has security clearance and close ties to the Iranian regime, not only still works at the Pentagon, but was recently promoted.
Iran, of course, has been lying about its ambitions all along. And if it gets the bomb, it’s bye-bye Israel—or so I think i my more pessimistic moments. Perhaps Israel is waiting until after the election to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the U.S. has been curiously incurious about Iran’s developing weapons. And I have no idea whether either election result will affect the outcome. I think that only Israel can take the decision to step in, and it will certainly need American help.
*Author Suzanne Nossel has led the PEN America, the free-expression writers’ organization, since 2013. Under her stewardship, according to the NYT,
. . . . . its membership increased to more than 4,500, while its annual revenue grew to about $25.8 million, up from $4.3 million.
The group, by far the largest of the national PEN International chapters worldwide, also expanded beyond its traditional focus on the literary world, starting initiatives relating to free speech on campus, online harassment, book bans and the spread of state laws restricting teaching on race, gender and other “divisive concepts.”
That sounds pretty good, right? But PEN America has also had its troubles, many centered around Charlie Hebdo and the war in Gaza. After all this, Nossel has decided to leave, for PEN, like many other groups, is imploding with wokeness, and Nossel is calling it quits:
. . . . .There have also been flare-ups of intense controversy within the group’s ranks. In 2015, when PEN America announced a decision to give a “freedom of expression courage award” to the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, six writers serving as table hosts withdrew from the annual gala, while more than 200 members signed a letter that criticized honoring a publication that many Muslims in France saw as racist and Islamophobic.
It is ridiculous that this organization more or less defended the outrage of Muslims over a magazine that made fun of all faiths, and by so doing gave its imprimatur on censorship. I’m not sure what the barriers were that prevented marginalized people from being heard, but they surely are largely gone:
In the aftermath of that controversy, PEN America worked to diversify its offerings and its ranks, while also increasingly emphasizing that free speech is not just about defending the right to speak, but also dismantling barriers that prevent marginalized people from being heard.
Finally, the war (Nossel is Jewish and has relatives in Israel):
But tensions exploded anew after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel ignited a war. Critics inside and outside the group charged PEN America with failing to adequately speak out about dire threats to Palestinian writers and cultural life posed by Israel’s devastating military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Many saw a sharp contrast with the group’s full-throated defense of Ukrainian writers after the 2022 Russian invasion.
There was a series of open letters signed by hundreds of writers harshly criticizing the group, accusing it of betraying its ideals and displaying a bias. There were calls for Nossel’s departure, with one letter accusing the group of “parroting” the Israeli government’s talking points and blasting what it described as her “longstanding commitments to Zionism, Islamophobia, and imperial wars in the Middle East.”
In late April, PEN America canceled its literary awards ceremony and then its annual World Voices Festival, after many participants withdrew in protest. The cancellations in turn prompted charges and countercharges of bullying and intimidating. Some PEN members accused critics of acting in an “authoritarian” spirit, while others argued that some of the criticism of Nossel, who is Jewish, had crossed a line into antisemitism.
This is a damn shame, as Nossel was a good leader and PEN America was a good organization. But since the Charlie Hebdo fracas, I’ve been very wary of it, and finally Nossel is throwing in the towel. It seems that the organization is increasingly taking stands against free speech, and that may be its undoing.
*Our student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, reports that after a student was placed on involuntary leave by the University for engaging in prohibited activities during a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration, the students and their supporters engaged in yet another demonstration, this time trying to get the punishment rescinded. As we’ve learned, one demand of these protestors, here and almost everywhere, is that they must be exempt from punishment when they break either the law or campus regulations. (They don’t seem to like the part of civil disobedience where you have to take the punishment for breaking the law.) There is nothing a student can do, apparently, that warrants any kind of university punishment (the City of Chicago also dropped trespassing charges against protesters arrested last spring).
Pro-Palestine protesters delivered a petition to the Office of the Dean of Students on Tuesday, urging the University to reverse the involuntary leave of absence on which a student was placed after being arrested at the October 11 protest. After being placed on leave, the student was ordered to immediately vacate student housing in accordance with the University’s involuntary leave of absence policy.
The rally, led by UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP), began at approximately 11:40 a.m. with around 40 protesters gathered outside Harper Memorial Library. It started with chants of “Free, free Palestine!” followed by speakers reading the petition aloud, referring to the student as “A.” to protect his identity.
“October 11 was A.’s first time going to a protest at UChicago. Now the university has forced him out of his home, threatened him with arrest if he returns to campus, and cut off his access to his meal plan—imposing an unjust, unlawful sanction on this student in violation of its own policies and state law,” the petition read.
The Maroon has verified that the petition to reverse the involuntary leave of absence gathered over 1,500 individual signatures, including students, faculty and staff, community members, and various organizations.
During the rally, speakers demanded that the student be permitted to return to campus and resume his education immediately. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” a speaker said, which was followed by cheers from the crowd.
According to University policy, the decision to place a student on involuntary leave of absence is up to the discretion of the dean of students. The student may request a review; however, once the dean reaches a final decision, it is “final and unreviewable within the University.”
. . . At approximately 11:52 a.m., the protesters entered Harper. The group continued chanting, “Hey deans, what do you say, how many kids did you bomb today?” and “UChicago loves investments, UChicago hates its students,” as they moved toward the Office of the Dean of Students.
Seriously? The deans are bombing Gaza? That’s is what used to be called a “stretcher” in America, and a big one. Not only that, but if you go to the page containing this article, the Maroon has blurred the faces of the students entering the building to deliver the petition! Although many of the students are wearing masks or keffiyehs, the faces still get blurred. This is what makes me think that the student newspaper is actually protecting the protestors from being identified, though it’s perfectly legal to photographs students demonstrating in public. We’re not only in for another year of protests that violate laws and campus regulations, but also of the Maroon protecting them. (After a year of nonstop news siding with Palestine, the paper promised to print an article giving the Israeli side. It never did.)
*Finally, never-Trumper Andrew Sullivan, who said he is voting for Harris despite his conservative leanings, tries to reassure us that America will survive whoever wins on November 5. His column is “Does liberal democracy end next week?”, and to Sullivan, Trump is the archnemesis of liberal democracy:
Critically, the oldest and greatest cultural bulwark of liberalism — Christianity — also collapsed. The deep belief that we are all equal in the eyes of God and all equally flawed and forgivable gave way to a fundamentalist hubris on the right that saw liberals not as citizens who were misguided but as enemies who had to be destroyed. And on the left, Trump supporters soon became viewed as alien, anathema, unfathomable, deplorable — bigots for whom forgiveness was unthinkable.
That’s why we’re so on edge right now. For the two tribes, this has come to seem existential. If Harris wins, the right fears ever-more cultural onslaught, persecution, lawfare, and media gaslighting. If Trump wins, the left fears an end to the rule of law and the birth of a fascist regime — complete with camps, tanks, and an unquestionable leader. It feels less like an election than the eve of a final battle.
Well, of course I take issue with Sullivan’s encomiums for Christianity as “the greatest cultyural bulwark of liberalism” (how about “rationality”?), but let’s move on:
But is it? As someone who has seen our polity through this lens for some time, I’m now asking myself if I may have overstated the case. We will find out in the next few days and weeks if our worst fears materialize of a liberal democracy come undone. But here are some brief, unusually optimistic, thoughts ahead of the abyss in front of us.
Nothing is ever as bad as you think it is at the time. Yes, our discourse is horrid and made worse by social media. Yes, in the abstract, we have come to hate and fear one another. But in practice, in real life, I haven’t witnessed social collapse. Yes, things get a bit edgy. Yes, it’s hard to be a moderate in an evangelical church, or a liberal in a leftist corporation. But this is not 1968, as we saw this August in Chicago. American easy-going pragmatism still endures in both red and blue America. We feared American fascism in 2016. It didn’t arrive. The system survived one Trump term. It may well another.
Our 50-50 divide also helps in a way: it makes the red-blue gulf nerve-wracking — but it also effectively bars a huge victory for either side any time soon. We are more likely to continue gridlocked than descend into a civil war. Compared with any other developed nation, we’re also booming economically, despite our mutual loathing, innovating away, and still a cultural global hub. We’re not Weimar Germany — a new democracy wracked by hyper-inflation, mass unemployment, and wounded national pride. We are the oldest democracy in the world.
Federalism and the First Amendment are also the safety valves bequeathed us by our Founders. Some questions — like abortion — really are hard to compromise on, but forcing one side’s settlement on everyone (Roe) is the illiberal move. So in some ways, Dobbs has actually made liberalism easier, not harder. It allows for different legal regimes — and experience of them.
Is Roe really forcing one settlement on everyone? If you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. If there is any forcing going on here, it is forcing women who want abortions NOT to get one. I suppose a pro-choice scenario could be seen as engaging in “forcing” if you think that abortion is murder and you’re allowing murder to take place, but there’s a reason why those who favor abortion are called “pro-choice.” But let me close with one more statement from that article:
. . . . . the most extreme woke attempts at a cultural revolution — the bid to end the reality of biological sex, for example — eventually reveal themselves as forms of insanity and cruelty, and fail.
But he appends this:
Even so, you can now move to Minnesota and have your child’s sex reassigned before puberty; and you can also move to a state where boys are not at risk of being chemically castrated because they act like girls.
And this bit, which is surprising:
Liberalism wins not because it is better; but because every other option is worse. And as we fret about this election and its aftermath, that’s worth remembering. Liberal democracy is under threat, and we should be vigilant in protecting it. But there’s a reason the liberal settlement has lasted, however ragged. You declare liberalism over … and then realize you’ve got nothing credible or unifying to replace it with.
Is Sully declaring himself a liberal? Well, I’ll take his vote regardless. Perhaps his Kumbaya Moment is overexaggerated, but in truth I’m trying to adopt his mindset, hoping that whoever wins the election, our Republic is sturdy enough to stand.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is both philosophizing and psychologizing:
Hili: How can scoundrels look at themselves in the mirror?A: Easily.Rationalization always wins over rationalism.
Hili: Jak łajdacy patrzą w lustro?
Ja: Bez trudu. Racjonalizacja zawsze wygrywa z racjonalizmem.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From Malcolm:
From The Cat House on the Kings, a new variant on an old meme:
From Masih; a particularly brave Iranian woman (un-hijabbed). She fights a guy wearing a uniform!
See how this Iranian Iranian woman fight against a street harasser in uniform, showing fearless defiance. She’s one of many Iranian women refusing to stay silent and demanding their rights.
In my country, if you’re sexually harassed, authorities blame the victim, especially if… pic.twitter.com/ThWiBPE3SG
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 2, 2024
From Pinkah; you’d wait until the end of the Universe (whenever that is) until a monkey typed even one sentence from Shakespeare:
Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds. (This deserves an Ig Nobel Prize!) https://t.co/j40EZxBASZ
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) November 1, 2024
From Simon; a tweet by a Republican organization:
REMINDER: throw out rotting pumpkins now that it’s November pic.twitter.com/zBY4NF8Ssx
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) November 1, 2024
From Bryan, a science-based argument for free speech by Robert Oppenheimer (sound up):
“As long as men are free to ask what they will, free to say what they think, free to think what they must, science will never regress and freedom itself will never be wholly lost.”
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) November 1, 2024
From Malgorzata: The head of the UN gets his tweet “community noted”:
The UN Secretary General @antonioguterres gets Community Noted … again, over Russia and Ukraine. How utterly embarrassing and self-created by this pathetic man of a so-called leader. pic.twitter.com/seOXVwmkjx
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) October 27, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a pogrom that, if it lasted 24 hours, killed about one Jew every 30 seconds:
3-4 November 1943 | Aktion Erntefest (Harvest Festival) | The Germans murdered ca. 42,000 Jews in Lublin District of General Government. The massacre was the final element of Operation Reinhard – the murder of Polish Jews in GGhttps://t.co/9lx8CZBnNN pic.twitter.com/mIrGO2vqdo
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 3, 2024
Two tweets from Matthew. Can you spot the odd items out?
Here’s something you might not expect: there’s a cigarette and a few insects stuck in the paint surface of this Jackson Pollock painting called “Lavender Mist.” 👀
Can you find it? pic.twitter.com/5oNvN8Cvvd
— National Gallery of Art (@ngadc) November 2, 2024
. . . and Matthew says of this one, “I don’t know who she is but she is dumb.”
I will never concede this. The notion that Jesus was a Jew only came into prominence after WWII. For literally nearly 2000 years this was not a thought except in fringe academic circles beginning in the mid 19th century and now many just accept it as fact. It is not. Jesus was… https://t.co/wLaAHWDNNi
— Kim Iversen 🇺🇸 (@KimIversenShow) November 1, 2024
I’ll happily accept that Jesus didn’t exist, but, if he did, he was clearly Jewish. This makes as much sense, and probably comes from the same people, as saying that black people are descendants of Ham.
The question “Did Jesus exist?” is meanless without some parameters and a lot of clarification. What exactly are we asking?
Q: Did there exist a preacher named Yeshua in Galilee or Judea in the 1st century AD?
A: Yes, of course. Yeshua was a common name and the region was infested with preachers and religious fanatics of all kinds. I know that there existed a 1st century preacher in the region named Yeshua for the same reason I know that right now there is a Catholic priest named Michael.in the city of Philadelphia. It is a statistical certainty. I don’t need to research the existence of Catholic Father Michael of Philadelphia to be very certain.
Q: Did there exist a preacher named Yeshua who was born in Bethlehem shortly before 1AD, grew up in Nazareth, and got himself on the wrong side of Romans and Jewish authorities and got himself crucified in Jerusalem somewhere around 30-35AD?
A: Maybe. But the more details you add, the less likely they are to all be accurate.
Q: Did there exist a 1st century preacher tromping around Galilee and Judea preaching moral opinions that somewhat resemble the ideas of the Sermon on the Mount as narrated in the gospels?
A: Maybe. Someone had to come up with those ideas. Maybe the gospel writers put words in the mouth of a real or fictional preacher, or maybe there was a preacher who taught those ideas. He might even have been named Yeshua.
Q: Did there exist a character whose life closely matched the gospel accounts including resurrection from the dead, ascension into heaven, walking on water, and feeding a multitude with two fishes and five loaves?
A: No, of course not. Superstitious horseplop. Such beliefs should have gone extinct about the same time humanity mostly stopped believing in witchcraft and vampires and werewolves.
The trouble is, once you exclude the horseplop, what’s left?
As the self-described WEIT resident Jesus skeptic, I will point out that the only actual evidence for any of the Q’s you list is found in the Gospel of Mark (and its many later derivative gospels and other writings), which is anonymous, was written an entire generation after the events it depicts, in a foreign language, far from the the lands in which the story was set, can be shown to be a clever re-imagining of Old Testament and classical Greek tales, and consists almost entirely of events which are highly implausible if not physically impossible. The fact that uncounted billions of people have believed that it was historically accurate doesn’t increase its reliability in the slightest. I’d go so far as to say that back in the day, its intended readership would have recognized it as an obvious allegory, containing hidden messages but not to be taken literally (except by the ignorant).
So, by all means read and enjoy it as a window into spiritual beliefs and practices in the ancient Near East if you find that sort of thing entertaining (I do!).
Do those who believe that Jesus did exist, but was not a Jew, explain why his parents had him circumcised at eight days old, and later took him to Jerusalem to be consecrated to God (sacrificing two doves in a purification ritual) in accordance with Jewish law, as described in the second chapter of Luke?
If he existed he was definitely a Jew.
Yes, the question of whether Jesus existed really comes down to this question:
Did the author “Mark” (whoever he was) consider that he was writing an account of a recently lived person, or was he writing a theological allegory?
Peter N is bang on. The only thing to add is that the author of ‘Mark’ drew not just on the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, and quite possibly on Greek mythology, but also on the half-dozen early epistles bearing the name of Paul.
And those epistles, on their own, contain virtually nothing that can be interpreted as being about the life, ministry or teaching of Jesus, despite having been written within 20 years or so of his supposed life and death. Indeed, they strongly suggest that, in the 50s BC and earlier, Jesus was considered to be a purely celestial being, a super-angel, and not a flesh-and-blood bloke on this earth at all.
So what was ‘Mark’ doing? Turning a spiritual, celestial story into something that better resonated with hoi polloi. And going with the zeitgeist: Richard Carrier points out that by the first century pretty well all cultures had a tradition of a dying-and-rising god. The Jews were just a bit late to the party!
I just spent the last two weeks working at an early voting site at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. We had very busy days (despite having serious computer slowdowns in the first couple of days), and in the last week we were getting in excess of 500 ballots per day (and this is one of ten locations in the city of Milwaukee, and several were way busier) and on the last day the ballot count at this site was 960. Based on my observations of the voters (I’ve been an election worker for eighteen years), most of the people voted straight dem, and a lot of people wearing Harris/Walz buttons and hats were coming in. I will be supervising a polling site on Tuesday, and we are expecting a large turnout despite the early voting surge. I have been trained on spotting people hoping to disrupt polling places, and state law gives me the authority to have people arrested if they are, in my judgment, disrupting the voting process. It will be a long day (it’s a 15 hour stint with no breaks for the chief), but it will be worth it.
I recently realized that there are people now voting who hadn’t been born when I worked my first election. The early voting site at which I worked was on the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin campus, so there were a lot of student voters. I was a student on that campus some mumblety (fifty) years ago, but it seems to me that the young voters are much more politically naive than they were in the 1970s. We checked in students who were living in Milwaukee who didn’t understand that they couldn’t vote there when they were registered in their distant (or out-of-state) home towns. They’d give an address in Green Bay or Eau Claire or Pardeeville (or hometowns in other states) and wonder why they had to file a new registration. People presented as IDs drivers licenses from Illinois, Vermont, Tennesee or California and had to be instructed that those were not acceptible in their current state of residence (many did not consider themselves residents of Milwaukee because they thought of their student status as temporary). Most of them aquiesced politely when I told them that they couldn’t vote without re-registering or getting a local ID, which made me contemplate how malleable these youngsters are when they are instructed by someone in authority. I seem to remember from my student days a greater reluctance to simply accept instructions like that, so it doesn’t surprise me that young voters can be swayed by an authoritarian candidate. The days when the watchword of youth was “question authority” are over. First- and second-year college students are still in the mindset of high school and middle school where teachers and other adults are like demigods, to be obeyed and not challenged. So it doesn’t surprise me that authoritarianism is on the rise in the US.
Interesting observations. If there is a sway toward adhering to authoritarianism, it could be because we are in unstable times. It would be an instinct, then, to gravitate toward those who tell people what to do and what to think.
It’s surprising to me that many don’t understand that they need to vote where they are designated to be a resident. But these are first-time voters.
Are you prepared for the possible influx of radicalized Christian election workers who believe they are on a divine mission to prevent the demonic democrats from “stealing” a *second* election?
The below quotes are from an article in the Atlantic about traveling tent-revivals that have the goal of convincing Christians they have a religious duty to prevent God’s chosen candidate Trump from losing. One way of doing so is by becoming paid election workers:
>Wallnau introduced a young political operative named Joshua Standifer, who … was the founder of the Lion of Judah, whose homepage includes the slogan “Fight the fraud.”
>… “You’re actually going to be a paid election worker … I call this our Trojan horse in. They don’t see it coming, but we’re going to flood election poll stations across the country with spiritual believers.”…
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/eau-claire-tent-revival/680097/
I have fifteen Election Inspectors assigned to work for me on election day – four on the full day shift (6:00 AM to 9:00 PM), five on the AM shift (6:00 AM to 2:00 PM) and six on the PM shift (2:00 PM to 9:00 PM). Of these, only two are people with whom I have not worked before. None of the thirteen veteran workers are religious or political fanatics (or, if they are, they know how to keep it to themselves), so that leaves me with only two people whose proclivities are unknown to me. Both of them are people who live in my neighborhood, which is a bastion of liberalism – I call it the place where aging hippies go to die. If the two newcomers cause any problems, I have the right not only to dismiss them, but, if necessary, to have them forcibly removed and even charged with a felony under Wisconsin statute 7.37(2). Since I also live in the area in which this polling site is located and have worked at this location for thirteen years and been the Chief Inspector for four, I have the advantage of knowing many of the voters and people who will be working for me. It’s only the outsiders I have to worry about. I believe that I can count on my staff and neighbors to back me up in maintaining order at the polling site.
That’s good to hear. It sounds like low turnover among election workers could very well thwart the idea of flooding the polls with ‘spiritual warriors.’
Thanks for your contribution Mr. Blair. Volunteering for boring election jobs is to my mind one of the highest public services.
And interesting to hear your comparisons and analysis of today’s young voters.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
My observation on the current campus population as opposed to that of my student days (I graduated in 1978) is that the fashion hasn’t changed much but the style is completely different. Most of those students wouldn’t *look* out of place if they were transported back fifty years, but their behavior and attitudes would set them well apart from my peers of that day.
Thanks for your volunteer service.
It doesn’t take an on-the-scene observer to conclude that most voters at a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee pollng place voted Democratic.
We do get paid for our time. Working a full shift on election day carries a stipend of $230.00 for a regular Inspector¹ and $325.00 for a Chief Inspector. In addition, there are stipends for training sessions and pre-election setup, and the rate for early voting work is $20.21 per hour.
¹ In Wisconsin, regular poll workers are given the highfalutin’ title of Inspector of Elections and the supervisor at a polling location is the Chief Inspector of Elections. I have been an Inspector for eighteen years and this is my fourth year as a Chief Inspector.
Sullivan has an article in the (UK) Sunday Times today that takes a more pessimistic view:
https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/why-trump-may-stage-greatest-comeback-us-history-7dfr8tzrq
This is probably paywalled for most people, but after laying into Biden and Harris for enabling Trump’s comeback, Sullivan concludes:
“I’m a conservative, and for me, the risk of destabilising the rule of law, the legitimacy of elections, and the peaceful transfer of power is what will make me hold my nose and vote Harris. Some risks are not worth taking….If Harris flames out in office, America will survive. If Trump goes down with a fight in his final term, the fragile forces holding the republic together could collapse entirely.”
Here’s an archived copy of Sully’s piece: https://archive.is/rk8xd
Thanks Jez.
Unrelated to the PEN America shenanigans, Hadley Freeman has a new article in The Sunday Times about censorious authors: https://archive.is/RpQfu
“I suppose a pro-choice scenario could be seen as engaging in “forcing” if you think that abortion is murder and you’re allowing murder to take place.” Simplistic reasoning (versus subtle, more-informed, reasoning) has legal utility and is difficult to counter. Biologists should be questioning the life-begins-at-fertilization dogma which guides the “murder” designation. Rather, “life” can best be portrayed as a continuum with no clearly definable starting point (see Biosystems December 2024).
Sully : “… The deep belief that we are all equal in the eyes of God and all equally flawed and forgivable gave way to a fundamentalist hubris on the right …”
I think the part I bolded is important – it has to do with the idea that no one is God, that heaven on Earth is a fantasy. We can’t fix or prevent everything we don’t like – because we do not nor will we ever know how to drive the forces of Nature precisely to achieve any outcome we can imagine (David Deutsch’s writing comes to mind on that point but I’d need to re-read his stuff).
Gnostic religious cults view that orthodox core view as the work of an evil demiurge artisan of the world, who is incentivized to conceal that we human beings can in fact be our own self-saving god, to bring forth the true soul not in an afterlife of completion, but here on Earth as the Ideal, at the End of History.
This continues to this day as the gnostic cult syncretic religious counterparts to theology named theosophy – using god’s wisdom to bring forth utopia.
They are usually in plain view when their magic spells are recognized, such as “consciousness”. I heard a guy use it the other day, to great effect. It can be read in a plethora of literature that does not look or feel religious – or perhaps might seem heretical (e.g. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a priest and crackpot).
Regarding our (U.S.) posture toward Iran’s quest for a bomb… . I agree that the Biden administration has effectively allowed Iran to continue to develop a bomb unabated. And it may be true that the U.S. has actually fostered that development as the Gatestone piece alleges.
My interpretation of the facts is that the Biden administration is timid and non-confrontational. In Israel, in Iran, and in the Russian war on Ukraine, the administration has been willing to help Israel but only with crippling restrictions, arm Ukraine only so far as to allow it to fight to at best a stalemate, but not to win, and warn Iran to play nice while at the same time funding its weak economy so that it doesn’t collapse.
It all seems so strange, except under the view that the U.S. is withdrawing from the world. It employs the rhetoric of global leadership—and feigns strength with limited demonstrations of power—but it seems fundamentally unwilling to project real power when it’s needed. Aspiring powers—Russia, China, Iran, North Korea—are surely paying attention.
Biden is following Obama, who was first in this Iran-friendly policy. From Martin Gurri:
Obama arrived at the White House with an original hypothesis about the way the world worked. He rejected the notion of U.S. interests entirely. To pursue such parochial obsessions, he thought, was selfish and primitive—a legacy of the barbaric human past. Instead, he envisioned the coming of a “rules-based world order” that would regulate affairs between nations in a rational and ethical manner.
Obama was vague about the rules themselves, but he made it clear they were not emanations of American values or power…
…Never a modest man, Obama clearly considered himself a light-bringer to the nations…
https://www.thefp.com/p/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-martin-gurri-israel-ukraine-taiwan
Biden and Harris are continuations of Obama. Many advisors are the same.
Agreed.
Does “follow the money” apply?
Who’s profiting from these wars? Not the humans involved in the actual fighting; death has come to far to many young military troops and civilians.
The global military industrial complex is clearly winning. They sell the weapons that are killing and maiming. The longer conflicts go on, and the more funds are dedicated to buying weapons of war, and the more those weapons are used, the more the corporations of death prosper and along with them the politicians who obtain financial gain and political power as a result.
I’m 100% for the right of Israel and Ukraine to defend themselves, and in favor of the US support given to them. But wouldn’t it be better to apply stronger pressure to the enemies of both of them as the world’s only real superpower to stop the attacks than to simply supply arms and money?
It’s unclear to me how either Putin or Hamas and its enablers Iran and Qatar can be deterred from their current violence.
Note that due to Obama, Iran has billions more than it would have had. Reapplying sanctions would slow Iran down. Won’t happen under Harris, a copy of Biden.
Negotiations with Putin? Maybe, I don’t know.
Hi Frau. I actually came here (to weit comments) looking for you to ask how much it costs to subscribe to The Free Press. I went there to inquire but can’t get any info without first giving them my email. I’m leary as I supported Bari Weiss when she first left the NYT but was disappointed, tried to “unsubscribe” and had a helluva time stopping them taking money from my account. I can’t find any $ info without first surrendering my email which I find odd…
DEBI: I can’t respond to you as your comment is too deeply nested. I hope you see this:
COST:
$8 a month or $80 a year for full access to the site’s offerings.
If you go by month you can cancel easily. Annual may not refund if you cancel halfway through.
I no longer see the USA as a superpower. A superpower is more concerned with enforcing its interests and values and protecting its allies, than with making endless concessions to its enemies and backstabbing its allies.
He’s probably calling himself “liberal” in the British sense of the word, a “classical liberal” in favour of Enlightenment values, rather than the American sense of the word, where it seems to mean “left wing” (and often in favour of illiberal policies).
Peters’ article in the NYT is classic “cope”. And lies. While not as shrill as 2020, not as full on witch burning pitchfork waving moral panic as the Post-Saint-Floyd madness of 2020, the larger point is woke has been burnt into the system for decades now.
New Woke Times bleating: “Don’t worry, you’re neighborhood won’t be burn down by BLM terrorists*, vote Kamala.”
What bs.
D.A.
*Mine wasn’t burnt to the ground, in Cheslea Manhattan, but two stores under me were trashed and finished by a mob seeking “Racial Justice.”
It was more amazing to me to see with my own eyes than what I saw in Lebanon at war decades ago.
“But some of the most effective pushback to the hard left has, in fact, come from within institutions sympathetic to progressive impulses.”
While there have been some welcome changes in such institutions, I wonder how much of it was caused by “pushback” from “within” those institutions. Not even an itsy-bitsy assist from Republican governors and legislatures, congressional hearings, profit margins, and—finally—some very deep-pocketed donors?
Call me skeptical on the “We can effectively police ourselves” lobby and “The moderates are back in charge” claims. We have seen this game before. Roll back the federal regulations and policies that were advanced under the “progressive” movement, particularly the ones pushed after the bait-and-switch of electing “moderate” Joe, and then we can talk about whether the “progressive” moment has passed. After all, I’m told that we know Kamala’s values, and her values haven’t changed—no matter what other words she may or may not speak.
With regards to “latinx” – it’s unnecessary and an affectation. We have the borrowed masculine and feminine forms “latino” and “latina” leaving “latin” as the gender-neutral term.
We are using Latine in our recent DEI trainings in corporate land; it’s the new Latinx.
There have been some high profile examples of dialing down wokism, but those are few in terms of the idealogical capture that it has on academia and corporate America. I’ll predict that regardless of which way this election goes that we’ll see a resurgence: if the D’s win, then it will come back strong, supported by the administration and unburdened by what has been a recent reduction; if the R’s win, then it will be #Resist all over again, with groups that recently pulled back from the woke fight reenergized.
Good to see the monkey-typing thing debunked. I never thought it was plausible.